


Tragedy: You'll Remember Me When I'm Gone

by insomniacjams



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Slice of Life, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3690504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insomniacjams/pseuds/insomniacjams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments Liam spent with Zayn, and one he spent without</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Days of Rage

**Author's Note:**

> I said, "There's just some things no matter how we plead,  
> begging on our knees, we don't get to keep."  
> \- Old Circles, Make Do and Mend
> 
> Unbeta'd. Sorry.
> 
>  
> 
> Rest easy, Todd Serious.

When he was growing up, his mum used to call him her "little soldier." Liam never thought he made a good soldier – he'd pick love over war any day, or so he said. "You don't know what a soldier is, Liam," Zayn tells him after the story, but Liam thinks he does.

Zayn says he chose martyrdom of art over military, but Liam thinks they're one in the same, barrelling forward and fighting for something better, something bigger than he'd ever known. Liam likes to think he has that type of passion, but he's never been good at standing up for what he believes in either.

Instead, he stands on the overpass and hands Zayn cans of spray paint as he dangles precariously from the edge, the worn stencil dangling from between his lips as he gets situated. "This isn't art," Liam's mum had told him once, a long time ago. It may have been the first time Liam didn't believe what she said. There were many times after that – when Zayn shaved the sides of his head, when they snuck into the eastside club, when they got so drunk they forgot their own names – many times Liam didn't believe what she said.

Now, Liam's clothes smell like paint fumes and cheap cologne – Liam's clothes smell like Zayn, and he showers when he gets home, too late, or too early as the sun starts to rise. He showers the smell from his body, but he curls up on his bed with those clothes, breathing in the chemicals, like they'll make him feel at home again.

Because these days, nothing feels more like home than Zayn.

His mum had told him once, that this was "Home sweet home."

He used to believe her, back then.

Now, he's not so sure if he wants home to be "sweet" anymore.


	2. I See Fire

Liam wishes he has something to fight for – wishes he has that fire burning inside him like Zayn does. Zayn carries himself like an eternal flame, and tells Liam that he found his spark years ago, hiding in a dumpster behind an abandoned brick building in London. Liam hadn't even been to London years ago, and now, he thinks it's kind of funny, the way Zayn pretends he hates the city (Liam knows he loves it – loves the filth and grime and hustle and bustle – Liam loves it too, but he'll openly admit it, eyes wide, shining proudly as he tells Zayn about the best fish and chips).

Zayn and Liam move to London together; they get a flat on the top of a hill that Liam gripes about every morning over his slightly burnt coffee from the shop where he works and Zayn whinges about every night on his way home from the gallery where he spends his days.

One day, Liam comes home; he's not breathing as hard as he was in the beginning of the year, but there's snow on the ground turned to slush from the never-ending drizzle, and he's soaked through another pair of boots. One day, Liam comes home, and there's a phoenix in the kitchen. 

Objectively speaking, it's not a real phoenix (of course it isn’t, Zayn's an artist, not a magician). But there is a phoenix. In the kitchen. Zayn is nowhere to be found, which is fine, it's normal, it's a very Zayn thing to do – to disappear and leave a phoenix in the kitchen. Liam sidesteps the massive canvas, and reaches for a cup. He'll need more coffee for this.

He feels a bit like he's on fire, burning up from the inside as the bird sets its fiery gaze on Liam's, a disapproving frown on its beak, and before now, Liam never knew birds could look so disapproving. Zayn comes home and finds Liam staring down the painting, empty mug clutched in his hands.

"I caught a spark," Zayn says.

"It started a forest fire," Liam observes.

"Forest fires are natural; they are beneficial to the ecosystems."

Liam doesn't peel his eyes from the bird, so Zayn takes the mug from his hands and slowly starts rinsing it out in the sink before placing it in the dishwasher. When he turns around, Liam's not staring at the painting anymore – he's staring at Zayn. 

"You're so hot," Liam blurts, and then flushes. The tips of Zayn's ears turn pink, and he turns away.

"I'm going to burn out one day, Li. Then what? I won't be so hot anymore."

"Don't talk like that," Liam scolds, so Zayn stops – never mentions it again.


	3. I Heard You Singing

Zayn starts disappearing on weekends. Liam doesn't worry – he's learned now not to worry about Zayn, not to count on any form of consistency or reliability. He's learned, and he's worked his own life into a carefully scheduled mess around the whirlwind that is Zayn's ever-changing plans. 

But then Zayn comes back one day, a bruise on his cheek and a manic grin on his face, and Liam knows better than to ask – knows that he won't like the answer, but he reaches out – he strokes his finger along that bruise, and sucks in an anxious breath.

"Where have you been?" He asks.

The answer isn't as bad as he was anticipating, actually.

Zayn takes him out the next weekend. They wait until the sun goes down, sipping bears on the narrow deck, dangling their legs over the road and counting cars. "You'll like it," Zayn breaks the silence. Liam doesn't know what it is and he already wants to like it too.

"If you do, I will," Liam says. He knows that isn't true, even as the words leave his lips, but Zayn smiles anyway, one of those crooked half-smiles that he reserves for Liam alone, and Liam ducks his head bashfully, almost embarrassed. But not quite.

The sun goes down, and leaves their apartment in the shadow of a flickering streetlamp. Zayn leads Liam down winding roads to a tube station he's never been to, which takes them to the other side of town. They walk in the dark, in a well practiced side-by-side march, until they reach the bar.

The bar, it's darker than the street, marked by a nondescript, unlit sign. The tables are pushed to the wall, and Zayn, he leads Liam through the throngs. He says, "Art isn't just visual." Liam knows this – he's seen Zayn dance, he's seen Zayn sculpt, he's seen Zayn laugh – that in itself is an art, he knows.

Nothing he's ever seen Zayn do even comes close to seeing him sing. 

He lights up a room like a firework – there's no stage, just a tangle of wires on the ground, two guitarists that look like they know what they're doing, and a drummer that doesn't if his bloodshot eyes and the scent of weed clinging to his shirt says anything at all. 

There are kids, well, not really kids because they're in a bar, but there are kids. And Liam, he watches them surge forward, tangled together like one pulsing mass of bodies, getting up in Zayn's face like they, not he, own the stage. 

And Zayn lets them – he pushes the microphone into the faces that stagger close enough, lets the kids stand on his toes, and he smiles.

He smiles more than Liam's seen him smile in years. 

Liam slips out. He turns off his phone.

He walks across London, walks home, stopping at the park to watch the sunrise on the brisk winter morning.

He walks, until his fingers go numb, and he feels like he can never feel the heat of the sun again.


	4. Fight for the Sun

Zayn leaves on a Tuesday morning and drives into the rising sun. 

Liam is half awake in the kitchen wearing his pants and a too-tight t-shirt that might actually be Zayn's. He doesn't say goodbye, because goodbye sounds oddly permanent, and nothing about Zayn has ever screamed permanence. 

"Don't crash and die," he says instead, and Zayn snorts. He doesn't say anything in return, and if it were anyone else, Liam would be offended, but it's Zayn, so he just purses his lips, and watches him go.

Liam spends the next month drinking coffee by himself, drinking beer by himself, reading books that he thinks Zayn would like by himself, and pacing around in the kitchen, avoiding the phoenix's eyes. He feels dumb, like he's skirting this fake bird in his own damn flat, but at the same time, it feels right, like he shouldn't be looking at it without Zayn.

He lasts a week before he slides the door to Zayn's room open – a week and a half before he starts periodically wandering in to smell Zayn's cologne and bed sheets. (It's dumb, because they're clean, and they both use the same laundry detergent, but Liam pretends that Zayn's scent clings anyway).

"I miss you," Zayn says. His voice sounds tinny and far away on Liam's cheap laptop speaker. The Skype window is up and Zayn is lounging on someone's couch, petting someone's dog. Liam wants to lie on that couch and put his head in Zayn's lap like that dog. He cringes. 

"I miss you too," He says. "I think, uh, the fireball in the kitchen does too." Zayn's lips curl into a smirk. 

"Oh, does he now?" Liam laughs.

"Yeah, he does."

He doesn't wonders why Zayn never moved the painting. He's stopped wondering why Zayn does the things he does at all.

"I'll be home soon," Zayn says.

And he is, home soon, that is, tumbling into Liam's open arms as he struggles to stay awake, the van clunking out of the driveway with his friends, already forgotten as he buries his face in Liam's neck, and breathes in deep.


	5. Feel the Same

"It can wait," Liam says. He holds his hands tightly to his sides. There's a storm brewing in his stomach. He's still wearing his work shirt and Zayn is standing there looking like he just walked out of a photo shoot with his ridiculous sunglasses and slightly offensive perfect face. Liam looks like someone threw their lunch on him (it was actually a breakfast sandwich, but same effect).

Zayn looks light and flippant; his smile is wide and his teeth gleam in the dull glow of the coffee shop lights. "No, it can't – you don't get it, I'm leaving, Liam-"

And Liam, he just stops. He turns. He stares.

"Leaving? Where?"

"I'm going to America," Zayn says, says it like he's leaving tomorrow. Liam throws down the dishrag he's holding; he storms out from behind the counter, until they're nose to nose. 

"I'm going with you."

"No you're not," Zayn snaps, and Liam, he lunges, reaching forward – 

And Zayn, he sidesteps Liam easily. "Why won't you let me come?" Liam asks, and it's almost a whimper. He feels like a dog, leashed to this beast he can't shake. Liam's hands are trembling. 

"I need to do this alone," Zayn says, and the words cut through the bustle of coffee shop life like a snow plow driving through the front window.

"Oh," Liam says.

Zayn shakes his head, like he wants to say "Not here, not now." Instead, he says, "I'll see you at home."

(He doesn't, Liam sleeps on a friend's couch that night, and when he gets back to the flat in the morning, everything's quiet. The phoenix is gone.)


	6. The World Turned Upside Down

He's not sure what the worst part is; there are a few things that tug at the cavity in his chest as he stares blankly across the church. 

He never got to say goodbye. He lost the sweater Zayn accidentally left behind. He never took a picture of the phoenix. There's a shoebox of faded photographs he tore off the fridge, and a couple dozen suppressed memories that tell Liam he lives a life in pits of regret.

Everything's changed.

The sky is beginning to darken when the music stops, when the people laugh again, and Liam slips away from the crowd, watching what was once his whole life fade with the sunlight before his eyes.

He thinks, as he walks home alone, that he sees Zayn from the corner of his eye, trailing only two steps behind.

But that's impossible – the Zayn he knows, Zayn he knew, would never be two steps behind. Zayn always had to be first – or perhaps, Liam always made sure he was. Liam wrenches his door open, and manages to make it to his bedroom, fumbling around in the dark, before he breaks down.

For a moment, before he drifts off, he smells spray paint and feels the heat of a flame licking at his innards. He rolls over, and then he doesn’t feel anything anymore.

The phoenix turns up in a package marked delicate on Liam's doorstep ten years later. There's no note, no letter, not even a postage stamp that says it's been shipped. 

Liam wants to punch a hole straight through it and toss it in the dumpster. He thinks about selling it to a museum.

Instead, he brings it into his living room, and hangs it from the nail on the wall, the empty wall that's been waiting its whole life for this spark.

**Author's Note:**

> Does anybody still remember me? It's been a long time, and I apologize that my big comeback is such a sad piece of work.
> 
> (I didn't write this for Todd, at least, I didn't at first, but I guess since he passed away, a bit of everything I've written is for Todd.
> 
> This is just like how when Sean died, at the same time of year, three years ago, I didn't write a thing for him, except I actually wrote everything for him.
> 
> And I haven't been writing anything happy lately, so this is the in between. This is the slow acceptance. This is the dull throb of my heart when I realized I'd never see him again. )
> 
> I hope you've been taking care of yourselves. In lieu of recent news, I hope you treat yourselves well. I hope you're all still here, and breathing.
> 
> (Trust me when I say it gets better.)
> 
> This was for Todd.  
> But this is for Zayn too.


End file.
